This invention relates generally to card holders and more particularly to a device for holding a transaction card, such as a gift card, already attached to a flat backer panel.
Transaction cards, stored value cards, or gift cards, as they are commonly called based upon their intended use, have become popular gifts. Gift cards typically comprise a stored value card whereby a certain cash equivalent value is encoded upon a magnetic strip applied to the surface of the card. This stored value may be determined by the vendor prior to packaging and display for sale or, more commonly, is selected at the point of sale by the purchaser and loaded by the cashier using a magnetic card reader/writer. While popular, gift cards are typically provided with a generic and impersonal design, typically identifying the associated merchant for which the card may be used to purchase merchandise, and therefore are not personalized in view of the intended recipient.
What is needed, therefore, is a gift card holder that provides graphical and mechanical enhancements to entertain the gift card recipient and add value to the gift. What is also needed is a means to assemble a gift card backer panel to a separately manufactured gift card holder so that the backer panel bearing a gift card and the gift card holder may be displayed and sold as a unit while taking up no more space on a display stand than a gift card backer panel displayed alone.